


Cotton Anniversary

by embolalia



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: 2020 US Presidential Election, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: It's the third Presidential election they've covered together, and a year like no other.
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	Cotton Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> Written and posted November 3, 2020. Outcome unknown...

Mac closes the window on her screen and rubs her hands over her face. No matter how many times she refreshes the numbers before 7PM, the election map will still be blank. They’ve done all they possibly can to educate voters. For the next hour, until coverage starts, she’s totally out of control.

Standing and rolling her shoulders, Mac heads out of her office and into the nearly empty bullpen. It’s been eight months since the pandemic began, and she still finds it eerie walking around the newsroom. They’ve been working with a skeleton crew for safety’s sake, in pods that use different floors of the building emptied out by divisions of ACN that are working remotely. The election statisticians are three floors down tonight, and she won’t see them face-to-face unless there’s an emergency.

At least the great rearrangement gave her an excuse to relocate to her old office, on the grounds that she was already exposed to Will’s germs and shouldn’t be bringing home whatever goes around the 44th floor, too. Mac smiles. And they brought the children in house.

She peeks between the blinds of the conference room at Charlotte playing with Sloan and Don’s sons, Kendra’s daughter, and Joey’s oldest boy. Watched over by teachers by day, nannies by night, keeping this lot safe is her primary concern. But too much of their future rides on tonight’s outcome for her to go inside right now.

“Mac,” Don says, saluting her as he crosses through the newsroom. “Has he finished his copy yet?”

She grimaces at him. “I’ll check.”

He raises an eyebrow, suggesting that her intervention might just restart the fight she’s been having with Will all week about how directly to contradict the president if he tries to call the election before all the votes are counted. Will is pro confrontation, and of course she is too, but Pruitt is in her head these days, demanding that the TikTok demographic be considered before Will uses any big words. Mac waves Don back to work. He’ll be the EP for tonight’s coverage, with Sloan and Will at the desk and Jim and Maggie taking shifts from DC. Mac will make the final call on results like Charlie used to. If there are calls to be made. If the results aren’t—she feels nauseous.

When she pushes into Will’s office, he’s sitting at his desk, crumpled papers strewn across its surface. His eyes soften as he sees her. “Hi,” he says.

“Shouldn’t you be dressed for the show by now?” Mac hears the anxiety creeping into her voice. “It’s dark out.”

“Daylight savings time. It’s earlier than you think.”

She sinks into a chair across from him. They’ve had a daunting year that included an exposé of concentration camps at the border that left Will in tears every time he looked at Charlotte for a month, coverage of the crowded hallways of New York hospitals and the refrigerated trucks parked outside, and Will trying to single-handedly lead a Republican opposition that has burned more than a few bridges with both parties. Somehow, though, he seems calm.

“Have you decided what you’ll say if he tries to declare victory?” Mac asks. She holds up her palms in quick surrender. “I’m just asking for the sake of the teleprompters.”

Will scoops up the nearest balls of yellow paper and lobs them toward his trash can. He holds up one finger, takes a breath, releases it, then finally speaks. “I was thinking of starting with—America isn’t the greatest country in the world, but it can be.”

Mac smiles. “A good start.”

“The trajectory of America hasn’t always followed a direct path, and there have been leaders and parties whose vision of _greatest_ isn’t my own, but the will of the vast majority of Americans has always been toward fairness, and equality, and—”

“Civility?” Mac quips.

Her husband glares. “ _Civility._ About a decade ago, I said some of this at an event at Northwestern. It went a bit viral—“

“Wouldn’t use that word during a pandemic,” Mac mutters.

“And part of what I said was that America used to be great. That rhetoric has been abused for the last four years, and I’ve pointed out its flaws before but tonight demands that we say it again. The good old days were only ever good for some people. People who looked like me, and our President, and nearly every president we’ve ever had. People with money, and people with privilege. Somehow this party that I grew up with has decided that that’s just fine, that the people who’ve never had it good should learn to live with it, and if they don’t want to, they’ll be stripped of their rights and their votes. Right now, in our courts, so-called-Republicans are fighting in battleground states from Pennsylvania to Texas to try to disenfranchise people who disagree with them. But this is still America. We have laws, and courts, and a system that isn’t perfect but is better than it used to be. And no one man, however bombastic or demented or fucking evil—”

“I assume we’re censoring this for live air?”

“Or evil he may be,” Will continues, “no one man can overturn the will of the people. That’s democracy. That’s the whole point.”

Tears warm Mac’s eyes for a moment, and she nods as she blinks them back. “Good,” she finally says with a sniffle. “That’s good.”

“Did you know people whose birthdays are on February 29th are called leaplings?” Will asks.

Mackenzie blinks. “What’s happening now?”

“Leapers, too. People who are born on leap day. They might celebrate on February 28th or March 1st three years out of four, but technically they only have a real birthday every four years.” Will pushes a package across the desk to her, wrapped in Christmas tree wrapping paper she recognizes from the back of their closet.

She stares at it, then back up at him. “Was this election too much? Have you just lost it?”

Will waves a hand at the package. “Go on.”

Mac unplucks the taped edge. Whatever’s inside has a bit of squish to it.

“Our anniversary feels a bit like that,” he says as she shakes out a roll of fabric. “Sure, we can celebrate the day we got engaged every year, but it’s _really_ our anniversary when there’s an election. Anyway, the second anniversary is cotton.”

“Cotton,” Mac repeats, as she stretches out the flag.

“That’s as much ours as anyone else’s. They can try to co-opt it, but it belongs to everyone.”

“Thank you.”

“Come here.”

Grateful for the privacy of the near empty newsroom, Mac circles the desk and sits in Will’s lap. Their years together have taught her that Will comforting her makes both of them feel better. He wraps his arms around her as she tucks her forehead into the curve of his throat.

“Did you know lace is one of the eighth anniversary gifts?” she asks with a lilt in her voice. She feels Will’s chuckle. “If things haven’t devolved into total chaos by our _actual_ _anniversary_ on Friday, there might be some lace in it for you.”

“All the more reason to keep democracy afloat,” Will says. When she doesn’t answer, he presses a kiss to her forehead. Their daughter’s laughter rings out from the conference room. “It’ll be alright,” he promises.

Mac turns her head to kiss him. “You’re on the air in thirty.”


End file.
